By 
Shihnong
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Starcraft II Single Player Impressions (Blizzcon 2009)
Starcraft II’s single player gameplay focused upon two missions from the Terran campaign. You essentially play as Jim Raynor who will be strategizing and leading his men to fight against Kerrigan, Queen of Blades, and apparently the Protoss too.
Now, I was never a big fan of Starcraft, so if you have a problem, notice the title of the blog?
The gameplay trial began with a cinematic showing Jim and his crew fleeing from Mutalisks. The cinematic is rendered through the in-game engine and looks amazing.
After that, you enter a hub screen reminiscent of old point-and-click adventures games. Depending on what you click, Jim will discuss what they are or interact with the person. During this Hub, you have access to the Cantina where you can hire mercenaries, the Amory where you can buy upgrades (stim packs, automatic turrets on your bunkers, increased healing by Medics, etc.), the Lab where I didn’t go ‘cause I only had 20 min. per trial and wanted to try the missions, and the Bridge where you can access missions. It’s an interesting tidbit to add, and after some tinkering, it becomes second nature. But if you want exactly what StarCraft gave with the mission overview in the beginning, be sorely disappointed.
Missions:
There were 2: “Evacuation of Agria” and “Tooth and Nail.” During each mission, you gain access to a different new unit. Agria gives firebats, and Tooth and Nail gives Marauders.
Evacuation of Agria
An escort map where you lead civilians along a set path to escape. Fricken’ hard. I didn’t have time to finish it, but it feels that it’d take a while to beat. You have to build firebats/marines/medics to guide the civilians, and you also have a side mission to pick up chrysalis (I have no idea) with SCVs.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I remember firebats’ splash damage hurting your own units. It didn’t happen now.
Unit size has been increased to 32 per group, but I never amassed that many. Instead, I got my ass handed to me by zerglings and hydralisks.
Tooth and Nail
A collection map where all you have to do is fight up to a Protoss relic guarded by the Protoss and their giant Stone Templars – Statues of Templars that come to life and hit like no other. You get Marauders for this map. They kick ass. Significantly easier than the Evacuation of Agria map.
Mineral mining has been reduced from 8 to 5. Gas collection has been reduced from 8 to 4. I didn’t check on the unit prices because I was too busy killing me some Protoss.
The campaign and gameplay for single player is shaping up quite nicely.
Fun Fact:
At the Cantina, there’s a hologram on the top left of a female dancer. The dance is the Female Night Elf’s dance. Hilarious.
Fun Fact 2:
I was looking the most forward to D III, but after trying the single-player demo of SC II, screw D III. SC II!
Best Part:
Micro-management is much easier this time around. Unit pathing and unit collision actually works! (My friend pointed this one out.)
Worst Part:
I tried clicking the medic to get all the voice samples, but all I got were 2. I’m sure there’re more, but it would’ve been nice in the trial.
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The lab is the point of the side-missions to collect protoss relics/zerg bio-stuff. As you collect materials you can use them in the lab to research the zerg or the protoss. I don't know how it changes as you continue along but it showed to start that if you collected like 8 zerg samples you could gain firepower against the zerg, and researching some protoss stuff would allow you to improve the defensive stats of your own vehicles (you're like studying their own shielding systems or something).
And this is why we have friends who can cover my terrible/biased reporting.
The StarCraft campaigns were always a little challenging. My strategy was to spend around 20 minutes just amassing units and defending my base with turrets.
I really dislike the missions where they don't let you build more units. I like how you say they let you build units for an escort mission. StarCraft isn't the game where one unit can live long enough to determine the battle.
If you have a chance, you could have asked if the Blizzard team was going to put the transforming Command Center in the game as a bonus mission or a real unit. "It's morphin time"
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